A couple weeks ago, I was sitting outside enjoying some sunshine and chatting with one of my classmates before walking into class. She mentioned that she's been trying to find a public health internship in Ghana, but has been having a hard time because she has no experience in the area. I've been spending a pretty good chunk of time with the African Club this semester, and have gotten be friends with a lot of the Africans here. There are nine Ghanians here on campus and I remembered a conversation about the Ghana medical system I'd had with one of them, so I offered to get her in touch with a couple people to see if they could help her out.
Fast forward to today at the end of our anthropology class: I was just leaving when Rachel, my classmate, told me that she had an internship! Maxwell, the guy from Ghana that she'd been talking to, has a brother who works with the military hospital system over there and said he could help get her an internship and that everything will be final in the next couple of days so she can start working on her visa stuff and all those necessaries. How exciting!
I've probably mentioned it a million times already, but I love my school and how international it is. My english teacher may curse me for saying this but she also taught me to quote my sources... According to wikipedia, BYU-H has a higher percentage of international students than any other baccalaureate institute in the US. I was looking around my classes today and saw students from Guam, Tonga, Samoa, the Philippines, New Zealand, Mongolia, Japan, Hong Kong, Burundi, Sweden, Wales, Brazil and Mexico, among many others. I work with other students from Taiwan, Macau, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Korea. There are so many opportunities to learn about others cultures and backgrounds and to make connections that will last a lifetime. I'm sure that as I go about my career, I'll have the chance to visit some of those places and to have people I call friends to say hello to, and that is an awesome, awesome thing.
African Club before our performance at Songfest in October.
it works best of course if you stay in touch with people.
ReplyDeleteAnd an international student body is an asset PARTICULARLY for someone with an interest in anthropology and/or international relations. Who do I know like that? ;-)
ReplyDeleteKeep your passport current!
And to Anonymous- that's what facebook's for. (Of course, we have to get her to respond occasionally.)